Tuesday, October 28, 2014

If you’ve not yet heard of Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe and her ambitious, hopeful work at Saint Monica’s Tailoring Center in Gulu, Uganda, now would be a good time to get to know her. While we worry over the well being of West Africa and impotently hashtag into the universe #BringBackOurGirls, we need to know that people like Sister Rosemary live and flourish in the middle of unspeakable human suffering.

I first became acquainted with her story watching Sewing Hope, a documentary chronicling her work among former child soldiers who had been released from the Lord’s Resistance Army back into the Gulu community. Joseph Kony and his army of rebels abducted, raped, maimed and forced children to kill their own families. The LRA then released the child soldiers - now grown - back into the very communities in which they had committed violent crimes. The girls returned to their homes carrying on their backs the children they birthed to Kony’s officers, only to discover they had become outcasts to their own neighbors and family.

Tamara Hill Murphy

I am Tamara Murphy: born and raised in a cynical, smalltown Northeast still harboring a penchant for hope and big ideas. Now I live in the bright city of Austin, Texas with my audacious and often-homesick family: two daughters, two sons, one husband.

I believe in the power of the written word. I read and write words to make friends with the ancient, present and future. I write to encourage both you and me to see God's presence through daily practices of art, liturgy and relationship.